Breakfast
by labellerien
Summary: SSHG. They worked. Then they didn't.
1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: I own nothing in the Harry Potter franchise and am making no money from this.

Chapter One- Wonderfully Cosmic

Shimmering silver sheets are sliding beneath my body as I twist and jerk. Long, sinuous fingers tease and touch me in places I never knew I possessed. My back arches up high, like a puppeteer is pulling the invisible strings at my navel. He knows exactly where to feel, exactly how to feel, and exactly how to make me completely overcome with sensations. His tongue moves over the place I want him to touch me most, flicking up and down, building the pressure I need so desperately to be relieved of, but he stops when I am nanoseconds away from imploding.

Then, his body is fitted against mine in all the right places, all the places a man and woman should fit together. He is inside me physically and, I think, mentally. Erratic thrusts and sloppy kisses define this night. Erratic and sloppy do not describe him. It does not describe us. He builds me up, my lower half aching with an itch that can't be scratched, not until he scratches harder and faster. When he does, it's wonderfully cosmic. My legs shake. My toes curl. My head thrashes from side to side. A river is flooding in me, continuously sending sensations through my limbs. He is above me, a look of determined ecstasy gracing his features as he releases himself inside me. Our bodies, once moulded together, eventually part.

Afterward it's always the same. I talk to him. He talks back. We converse about many things: potions, books, idiots in the school. I don't think any of it breaches some kind of protocol; everything said could be said in front of the Headmaster (though I don't think the sex part is included in the non-breaching segment of the evening). We have nothing deep. We are normal people, not geniuses. We are not the same.


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter Two- Magnificently Profound

It's been eating away at me for a very, very long time. I haven't seen him but once in all these long years. He didn't see me; at least I don't think he did. Not that it would matter. He wouldn't acknowledge me, even if he looked right into my eyes. I am dead to him.

None of that makes any difference to me. I have to see him. I _need_ to see him. My bones ache with a crackling pain to be near him, or so it seems. I want to apologize, and to accept his apology in return, to take him in my arms and shake him for being so insufferable (ironically enough, his endearment for me now applies to him), so impossible.

I take a quill from my desk drawer. I reach for a piece of parchment and place the inked quill to the scroll. But I can't do it. I can't think of anything to say, or how to say it. A dark, splotchy stain appears on the paper. I start over on a fresh page. I can barely manage his name being scrawled. My pulse beats in my fingertips and the quill shakes. I close my eyes and push my hand further along. It's all flowing from me now, none of it poignant, none of it magnificently profound. Just the necessity. Just the fact that I need to speak to him urgently. Please come. Please.

The owl flutters out the window. I sit in my chair, my large, cushiony chair in my small, hard living room, and I wait. Wait and think.


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter Three- Breakfast

He doesn't look at me. We've been sitting for nearly ten minutes. Not a word has been spoken. He pours a spoonful of sugar into his coffee, along with a dollop of milk. He stirs the mixture together, letting the spoon clang loudly against the cup. I look at his worn, beaten face intensely, hoping he'll look back, but he doesn't. His lengthy, strong fingers stroke a cigarette. He lights it, takes a deep breath, and blows smoke rings into the air.

Rain patters on the glass roof. I shift slightly, though how I can move right now is beyond me, and my iron chair scrapes across the cobblestone floor. He acts unaffected by the noise. He sits there in his chair, so nonchalant, so uncaring, so bored. It's as if I'm not here. It's as if he's contemplating his next luncheon, a luncheon without me. Or maybe something more meaningful: It's as if he's contemplating a life where we'd never met, a life where there was no know-it-all student to worm her way into his cold, malicious heart. He blows out more smoke, this time tipping the ashes into the tray with a flick of his forefinger.

"Severus-"

I can't even speak. The one time I wish to honestly voice my thoughts for a purpose, not just to be heard or to prove my intelligence, I can't fucking speak.

He reaches for his hat, something I have never pictured him wearing, and puts it on his head. He stands and takes the raincoat from his chair, something else that doesn't suit him, and shrugs into it. He flings his cigarette into the tray, leaving the butt burning a bright red-orange. He sets money on the table. Then he is going out the door and into the rain, looking for a cab, and not looking at me. Not speaking to me. Not thinking of me. Pretending I do not exist.

I put my head in my hands, and then I cry.


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter Four- An Explanation of a Sort

I don't really know how all of it started. A furtive glance here, a smirk there. It sneaked up on me, I suppose. I'd never felt any form of attraction towards him, merely admiration.

But there it was. He caught me looking, just once, and I think he understood. He understood that I had no idea what I was doing. He understood that it crept up on me from nowhere. And he encouraged it, or so I thought. He'd stare back when I admired his face, arms, chest, hands (gods, I was mesmerized by his hands), and even his exquisite arse. It seemed as if he enjoyed the attention. He certainly let up on me for being a know-it-all. Perhaps he didn't look at me at all. Perhaps none of it ever happened. But I doubt it. I doubt one would ever forget or correctly imagine the feel of fucking one's nasty git of a professor.

Eventually, I got up the bravery (or stupidity) to go to him. I wore my best dressing gown over my best pyjamas and arrived in the dungeons somewhere after one in the morning. I went deep past the Potions room, to a place no rational Gryffindor had ever gone nor would go, past the place of the Slytherin common room, past all logical thought. Now it was the Potions Master and I.

A lone door was at the hallway's end, looming at me. He had the door opened before I was within three meters of it. He was scowling, much to my amusement (or was it fear?). He looked around the corridor and yanked me by the hair into his office.

"Miss Granger-" he hissed.

Needless to say, I silenced him. My lips were on his, pressing with a fierceness I didn't know I possessed. After that, it was the end of me. Or should I say beginning? Either way, I was headed for trouble.

Nothing changed in the classroom. The brief lapse of him ignoring my know-it-all tendencies was gone. I was the annoying chit again. He had a modicum of decorum to maintain, after all. As did I. Hogwarts couldn't take it if they found out their perfect Head Girl was getting a nightly lesson from the dirty old Potions professor.

Outside of class, I was accosted by Ron daily. We kissed. Sometimes we fucked. It was nothing special. Randy teenage boys weren't my thing. Every time he'd slide into me, whispering nasty words at my ear, I stared up at the ceiling, wishing it was my secret lover, wishing I wasn't so advanced that I didn't want to have sex with a boy my age, that I didn't want to spend all my time with someone who enjoyed my company.

_He_ never knew that I secretly fucked Ron. He'd have been ballistic if he did. The charade I put up in public of being the frigid girlfriend was for both the fact that I didn't want everyone to think I was an easy lay for Ron, and for the fact that the professor watched my every move when I was within his line of vision.

But then I made an error. I let Ron get too antsy.

I had patrols a few times throughout the week, and Ron joined me during the earlier hours (as a Prefect, he could only be out so late). We never did anything; after all, we were supposed to set an example for the other students. Ron stayed later than normal one night. I can only say my slip in judgement was due to my damned teenage hormones. Ron and I were backed into an alcove, nearly hidden from sight. My leg was wrapped around his hip, my fingers in his hair. Again I was thinking of fucking my teacher, not Ron. Everything was going fine, if being disgusted by the person I was with was considered fine.

And then I saw him. Ron took my gasp of horror as a gasp of encouragement.

His face. His pale, worn, beautiful face. It was so sad, so betrayed. His obsidian eyes widened, then glared. The initial shock had left him. He was angry, very angry. Yet, instead of breaking us apart, he left. Turned on his heel and left.

I tried to speak with him again after that for two entire weeks every moment I could. He'd always find a way to slip from my presence. Eventually I resorted to breaking in his classroom, setting off his wards. He came, like I suspected. I blocked the door so he couldn't escape.

"Why won't you speak to me?" I asked.

He glared at me for an indeterminable amount of time.

"Severus-"

"Do not call me that, Miss Granger. I did not allow it when we fucked, and I will not allow it now."

"Why won't you speak to me?" I asked again.

He sat on the floor and crossed his legs in a very un-Snapeish manner.

"Imagine, Miss Granger, that you were having sex with someone you considered a bloody fucking miracle to his or her generation, someone you could relate to on many levels, someone who wouldn't judge you or betray you. Then imagine that person hurt you in the worst possible way, a way involving someone you almost considered the bane of your existence. Would you enjoy it, Miss Granger?"

I looked at him quizzically. "What? I don't understand-"

"Not surprising."

"-What you're getting at."

"What I'm getting at, you stupid chit, is that when you sleep with someone and develop feelings for them you don't go around acting like a damned tart!"

"Feelings? But I thought- Professor, we were just having sex. We weren't actually-"

"Oh, yes, of course. We were just fucking. That's the exact point, Granger. We weren't just fucking. It was more."

"Professor, I don't know what illusions you've pulled on yourself, but there was nothing between us. I'm sorry for the misunderstanding."

"Sorry? That's all you'll ever be, Hermione."

When he said my name, my real name, I know I'd made a terribly mistake. I'd fancied him the strong, collected spy for the Order. I'd imagined him to be able to handle anything. I'd thought I knew him. I didn't know him at all. He _was_ all those things, but really, he was just as fragile as the rest of us. Just as human, just as vulnerable. I'd taken him for granted, never imagining our post-coital talks would lead to something else. I'd underestimated my dear Professor, and I would pay for it, for the rest of my life…


End file.
